Dresden Park Railway - Freeware Route

Let me introduce you to my version of the Dresden Park Railway. It's not an exact replication as the railway is a miniature railway in Dresden's biggest park in real life, and replicating fitting locos and rolling stock would be way too much work for a freeware project. So my plan was to make a derivate where where we can drive the standard gauge locos and rolling stock we have in game on it. This meant some mandatory adaptions here and there, for example the curve radi for a miniature railway are not doable for standard gauge rolling stock. So I had to adapt the track to it.

What is the Dresden Park Railway? One of the most beautiful miniature railways in the world and located in Dresden's "Great Garden" park, not far off the main station. It originally even were a plan for DRA to do get it into - just like the airport branch - as tracks were placed and some assets you can find in the DRA folders as relict of them but unfortunately none of them got patched into later in, only the Meißen branch got added. And unfortunately, even for the DRA extension to Leipzig with TSW6 DTG couldn't find a way to bring any of the two into the route sadly.

You can find more information about the Dresden Park Railway on Wikipedia.

This project however were made long long time ago back in April and May 2024 (more than 1 year ago now) as test project whether cookign a route really works (noone at that point of time could confirm it) and I actually got it to work back then but because of a couple of reasons and the route weren't 100% finised (needed to figure out how spawn points work for example) I didn't released it back then. Now I finally got the time to port the route over to the TSW5 Editor and finish it.

It will not have a timetable and passenger spawning though. Timetable because I'm not that skilled on doing one yet (also it would be quite complicated here as its a looping circuit and you can't use the arrival and departure times of the real miniature railway as the track is different). And passenger spawning is actually a problem I had lots of problems with in the Editor and I know other creators had as well. It might be even not possible to get passenger spawning working correctly at all but if it is buggy as hell. So I apologize for no timetable and passengers.

Requirements:
It's FREEWARE. And in theory you only need the base game for it as 95% of the scenery and track infrastructure is referenced by the Training Centre is built into the game natively. However, I needed some assets here and there and used them from Nahverkehr Dresden Riesa (DRA). For example, the level crossings, assets for the stations, some buildings and the collectibles will not be available if you don't have DRA installed. BUT you can even use the route without DRA without a problem as the essential stuff is all taken from the Training Centre.

Owners of any of the TSW6 editions and Dresden Leipzig will be entitled to get Dresden Riesa for free with it. You only have to install Dresden Riesa alongside Dresden-Leipzig via Steam.

Only works with Train Sim World 5 and above. Although I did the route with the TSW4 Editor and it worked with TSW4 once, it doesn't do so anymore.

Features:

1. Discover the around 6 kilometer of tracks and 5 stations of my fictional version of the Dresden Park Railway with your owned locos and rolling stock. Be careful to keep below 20 kph in the curves as otherwise there is a high probability of derailing.
2. Discover the whole park on foot and enjoy a chilltime at the Carolasee or the park sides. There are no boundaries/limits which keep you off the world like in the official routes.
3. You can run the tracks with Diesel, Steam but also german Electric Locos (as shown in the video). Also third rail electrification for UK locos is provided.
4. Find all collectibles which I placed throughout the park! 24 garden gnomes and 9 first aid kits wait to be found! Oh, and Matt was so excited about Dresden Leipzig that he lost a pack of 12 of his pink cat-ear headphones in the park. Can you find them all for him?
5. You can route hop to Dresden-Riesa (Nahverkehr Dresden), Dresden-Chemnitz (Tharandter Rampe) and the new Dresden-Leipzig route (at least I hope it will work if DTG didn't change the logic of the spawning points for DLG - couldn't test it yet obviously). There is a route hop marker placed at the Bahnhof Zoo station. I'm currently thinking about a way to do a mod to route hop from DRA, DCZ or DLG to the Dresden Park Railway.

Bugs:

1. There is one junction when you made the loop and come back into Bahnhof Zoo again, which actually has been kept in left hand state while it should be in right hand state and bring you at the northern platform of Bahnhof Zoo. I couldn't fix this as the Editor bugged again from the route ported over from the TSW4 Editor and didn't let me to change the state of the junction. You need to switch this junction on your own before approaching via the 2D map (I do this in the video for demonstration).
2. Because of a skill issue (face palm emoji), I did the timetable a bit wrong. When you'll use the 12 o clock service, the formation for the 14 o clock service alredy is spawned and you could crash into it. I didn't want to alter the timetable though, because I like to have the 14:00 o clock service in. Try to delete the formation via the 2D map before appproaching the Bahnhof Zoo station.
3. God Mode doesn't work on it. I tried to follow Foobian's steps but the Editor didn't let me to work in this way. So no god mode for now. I maybe investigate a God Mode chance for an update tgough.

Expectations:
I don't plan to invest much more time with this project as I already did a lot for it back in May 2024. Maybe there will be a timetable at some point when I ever get into how to do timetabling finally, but no plans for now to implement one. If someone is interested in doing a timetable just contact me here or on Discord (RobertS on TSC).

Additional tips:

1. Because of the small curve radii, its actually an excellent route for smaller locos such as Thomas & Friends.
2. All collectibles are placed inside of the park area only. You can walk outside as well but there are just domestic houses placed for the scenery.
3. All junctions do have manual hand levers, but you also can toggle them via the 2D (9 key) map even if you're far away from the junction.

Have Fun!

Tags: dresden dresden-park-railway freeware route